F5 spends a lot of time in the jails. So, when we are around town people know who we are, and normally yell out to us. To be honest, you never know what you’re going to get when you turn around.
Today, I ran into a gentleman who smelled like alcohol, high on meth, and probably needs some medical attention for his medications. Grinding his teeth, trying to smoke a cigarette butt, and wearing a thick hoodie in 90 degree weather.
He remembered us from the jail meetings, and just wanted a few moments. (normally, people just ignore this and walk away) He has a probation meeting and court tomorrow, and knows he’s getting sent to prison. All the laws he’s broken since getting out of jail, and what he will be sent to prison are all related to being high and drinking. He is staying at the local homeless shelter, and he was on his way to the homeless clinic. We stopped at the gas station and we bought him some cigarettes. As soon as we gave them to him, he offered to help us with anything we needed, so he could pay us back. Then he went on to say he just wants to help people.
The reason Im writing this blog today is for a few reasons.
- I can see how the FM community are tired of having homeless people walk up to them, or ignore them. Its inconvenient, disturbing and can be scary at times. When you have never been in those shoes, its easy to justify to do nothing. Or.. you have to work and cant do anything. We at F5 Ventures can get wrapped up in our For-Profit stuff too, but we made a decision a long time ago that when someone reaches out, we will do our best to apply our experience and effort to help. I honestly feel that if we put our community first at the ground level, we will be better people and our business will be better too. So far, we are kicking ass and I have no reason to see why doing business this way wont benefit everyone.
- We have a homeless, felon, addiction, metal heath problem in our community. There is many reasons for this, but our community is sick and the only way we can fix this is if we all come together. There is nothing worse than for an homeless individual to feel hopeless… but when a person in our community that is successful also feels helpless because he has nowhere to take a person in need, other then a place that needs money, insurance or some kind of referral…we have a problem.
- When some stand in front of you that needs help, what do you do when you cant find the help needed, or don’t know about what is available? This is why we need better communication between government, corporate and nonprofit. We have the resources to help throughout the community. What we need is more people willing to help and not ignore the problem.
- When you view the homeless problem worse than the college binge drinking downtown, you are the problem. Ive seen more college kids or drunk adults that come from money, being more harmful to people in our community, especially to the homeless population, then I have ever seen come out of the homeless shelters. It almost seems people would rather get their ass kicked by a white person of means then having someone of color asking them for money… let that sink in.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Our guy that we helped today is in good hands. Lets hope for the best, put forth a good effort and be a little more tolerant of those who are not like us. For those of us who have been in their shoes, we will do our best.
